It probably wasn't intentional, but Josh Radnor's first feature feels like a cross between "Reality Bites" and "Garden State". Like Ben Stiller and Zach Braff, who also spent time in the television trenches, the actor-director takes the pulse of his generation through a cluster of characters. Radnor ("How I Met Your Mother") plays Sam, a freelance writer who lives in New York City, along with Mary-Catherine and Charlie (Broadway veterans Zoe Kazan and Pablo Schreiber), a couple agonizing over a move to Los Angeles, and Annie (Malin Åkerman), his best friend, who hasn't let an autoimmune disorder prevent her from enjoying an active social life, though she has doubts about the romantic potential in a particularly persistent attorney ("Arrested Development"'s Tony Hale). When Sam falls for Mississippi (Kate Mara), a barmaid who moonlights as a cabaret singer, she admits a mutual attraction, but fears he treats relationships more like short stories than novels, when she's looking for a man with a longer attention span. Sam's short-term outlook starts to change when he takes in Rasheen (Michael Algieri), a silent comedian of a boy who loses track of his foster family on a crowded subway train. A few hours as his guardian turns into several days when Sam's every attempt to return him to the authorities goes awry. If the upbeat resolution to these interrelated stories comes as little surprise, Radnor's maiden directorial voyage registers as a sweetly diverting affair--though he may want to go easy on the folk-pop montages next time around. "--Kathleen C. Fennessy"